cars are cool and the past is for chumps
Last night's movie: Drunken Master. This was the 1978 movie that helped launch the careers of both Jackie Chan and Yuen Wo Ping. Although there is way too much plot getting in the way of the story, there's not so much that it drags the movie down. You just need to give in and follow the movie from set piece to set piece and not worry about whether the story will pull together. It won't. But that's okay. (moving the rest of this below the cut as it contains some minor spoilers)
This is a much younger Jackie Chan and he hasn't developed the charming screen personality that's familiar from his later films. In Legend of Drunken Master (as it was called in its US release), his revisiting of the story about 15 years after the original, Wong Fei Hung is a charming rogue -- a bit mischievous, a bit irresponsible, etc. In the earlier version Chan's Wong Fei Hung is, basically, an asshole. Not without redeeming qualities but he's mostly a jerk.
Another interesting thing about Drunken Master is that the fight scenes are free of the wire-fu that Yuen and Tsui Hark would mastermind in the 80s. It's a physical tour de force performance by Chan. The scene where he demonstrates the drunken fighting techniques is breath-taking. You can also see the roots of his later physical comedy kung fu style in the marketplace fight, where he ends up using vegetables as a wea. Great fights, esp. Wong's wedding hall rematch with King of Bamboo and the early scene where Wong gets his ass kicked by his auntie. Also loads of lowbrow slapstick. A stone classic!